Four Parishes Arts Society - November 2009

The meeting on Tuesday 13 October opened with the AGM.  The Revised Committee is:
Chairman:  Josephine Taylor
Secretary:  Helen Norman
Treasurer:  Norman Green
Committee members:  Joan Bryan, Shirley Hayward

This was followed by an outstanding talk and slide show given by Owen Davies on Embroidery.

Owen had studied for three years at The Royal School of Needlework based at Hampton Court.  Before this he was a trained chef, but got very tired of his lovely creative dishes being eaten – naturally - and nothing to show at the end for all his hard work, just empty plates!!  So he applied for a three-year apprenticeship at the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court.

Words cannot do justice to the outstanding embroidery and artwork that Owen showed us on his slide show, undertaken during his three-year apprenticeship.  One has to see it to appreciate how talented this young man is.  He was a very pleasant talker to listen to as he took us through the slides explaining all the varied techniques he had undertaken to present these fabulous works of embroidery with materials of many different medias including gold metal and silk thread.  All had to be done to a tight schedule and many, many hours of work went into each piece.

We were shown a picture of the Queen’s magnificent, very long, coronation robe - black silk velvet heavily embroidered with gold right round the edges.  It took three months to embroider, with people working around the clock.  Owen described how the gold embroidery was worked at the old school premises at Princes Gate, Upper Gore.

After his apprenticeship he worked for two years in the workshop at Hampton Court and later became Head of Education to the apprenticeship course itself.  Owen has travelled widely abroad teaching, writing articles for needlework magazines and freelancing.  He is now the Needlework Consultant with the John Lewis group for their haberdashery department travelling all over the country.

Owen had brought along many examples of his work, which we had seen in the slides, for us to marvel at.  There were two pictures of ‘reverses embroidery’ i.e. the back was as neat as the front making it impossible to know which was which!

Once again we were entertained with any outstanding speaker and an outstanding subject, little of which is described here, for the only way to appreciate this young man’s talent in full was to be there.